Harlequin Love Poem
by MissScorp
Summary: The Joker needs to keep the Bats busy while he sets the final part of his plan into motion. So what does he do? He writes his favorite playmate a poem! Two-shot. Joker and Batman. In-game verse.
1. Harlequin Love Poem

**A/N: **This is set during the events of Arkham Asylum. Joker is meant to be slightly AU because obviously I am drawing some from his comic characterization to further deepen his character intentions.

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing but the poem, and the general concept of my story and theme.

* * *

He giggled while he wrote it.

And cried as he giggled; fat balls of wet that rolled down his pale and hollow cheeks and which pooled in the cracks and crevices of his hideously painted mouth.

Tonight was going to be the grandest of games...

Oh, it was going to be so much fun!

He'd gone to an insanely huge amount of trouble to ensure that everything was going to be perfect.

It had to be...

Or else there was going to be _hell _to pay.

But, he could not afford his King finding him.

Not just yet, at least.

So he wrote him this _little_ poem.

It was really nothing but a tiny token of his undying affection and adoration.

Just his way of reminding his Bats about how he _really_ felt.

_Oh, he'll be so appreciative to get my present_, he thinks as he pins it on a poster of himself- with a Bat-shaped paperclip no less! _Oh, won't he be impressed at my thoughtfulness_? A cruel twist twitches those scarlet lips into what could be called a smile.

Not that one can really tell the difference- he's always smiling after all.

Always tellin' a joke.

Always ready to deliver another stunning performance...

And tonight was to be his biggest show!

But there were things that still needing doing...

Guests he'd yet to invite.

So he needed to keep his Bats busy.

_And what better way to keep somebody busy than by having them read something that you wrote_? he silently wondered with a small giggle.

His poem would provide them with a fascinating topic of discussion for when they met later on.

Oh, he almost couldn't wait for the party to begin!

But the anticipation was half the fun.

Which was why he was placing this note in Harley's old office.

The one she'd used when she'd been a boring old Arkham doctor.

It was a means to get his Bats excited for the party, to make him eager to attend, make him appreciate all his efforts for making this night truly one of a kind!

He giggled as he stepped back, admiring his handiwork and picturing the delight and surprise that would be on his dear Knight's face while he read what he wrote him.

* * *

_Hello there, Bats!_

_Consider this your official invitation to the party I am throwing! _

_Do try to not be late (a little late is fashionably okay!) as I have gone to an extraordinary amount of trouble to make this a very special night for the two of us!_

_Tootles, darling!_

_P.S. Enjoy this little love poem... I wrote it just for you!_

**Love is a little bit of Anarchy**

_Bam! Pow!_

So hungry to do it that you can taste it

Acidic sulfur burning the tongue, alive in your throat

Throbbing within your veins, causing you to choke

Twisting your moral lines, (feel them shiver and nearly snap?)

And making you desperate to kill this laughing Jack.

Love is a little bit of Anarchy (you're gonna think you're going a bit Batty!)

It's a black dose of reality (We are gonna fight!)

It's a little bit of insanity (We are gonna bleed!)

It's a little bit extreme (You are gonna wonder if it's really all worth it!)

_Ompf! Ow!_

You open your mouth, a wordless snarl

Want to spit the taste of the Knave's poison out

But the laughter slithers through your veins, damning you

Almost turning you into what you fear becoming the most:

The pasty-faced monster that's been consumed by his rage.

Love is a little bit of Anarchy (you're gonna think you're going a bit Batty!)

It's a black dose of reality (We are gonna fight!)

It's a little bit of insanity (We are gonna bleed!)

It's a little bit extreme (And you are gonna wonder if it's really all worth it!)

* * *

He nodded.

It was brilliant.

Absolutely perfect!

He signed it with X's and O's-it wasn't like he needed to say the note was from him, right?

And then he giggled as he left the room, his high, keening laugh echoing off the asylum's walls and ricocheting back to the man who relentlessly pursued him.


	2. Love is a bit of anarchy

**A/N:** I wasn't going to write a second chapter to this story, but I had this idea come to me and opted to roll with it. So, we'll see if it works. Again, I'm taking the game setting but putting a bit of an AU-like spin on it.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing but for the general concept and theme of this story.

* * *

He spotted the note the instant that his boots hit the tile floor. It was pinned, with a paperclip in the shape of a bat no less, to a poster that was sickeningly covered in red lipstick kisses. He knew that the note had been penned by the damned clown. That it could only have been written by that damned clown. Just as he knew exactly why the damned clown had chosen to leave his _love note_ here in this office.

Because he'd _planned_ for him to find the note here...

In the office of the woman that the clown had decided to make fall madly in love with him.

The woman he'd convinced to trade in a life as a promising young Psychiatrist for one full of nothing but chaos and crime, of humiliation and degradation, of love and lies.

The very woman that _he'd_ offered to help break free of the clown's manipulation and abuse hundreds of times in the past...

...and had each and every one of those offers coldly, ruthlessly rejected.

Because every time Batman had Harleen Quinzel at the point of reaching out to accept his aide, that damn clown did something to lure Harley Quinn right back into his trap of mad love.

_Just another of his mind games,_ he thought as he snatched the yellowed paper off the poster and read the words the madman had written to him. _Another reminder about how I have failed to protect someone from his psychotic depravity_. He frowned at the paper; annoyed more than he was anything else by this token of the Joker's _affection_. That it was merely another form of manipulation, another method of distraction, another means of keeping him occupied while Joker finalized what he really had planned for this evening's festivities, was crystal clear to him.

This whole night had been one carefully orchestrated game in fact. A game that he'd foolishly begun playing the moment he arrived at Gotham City Hall in order to apprehend the pasty-faced prankster. He should have realized that his gut instinct was right-that the Joker had given up way too easily. He should have guessed that that '_mysterious fire' _that had occurred at Blackgate Penitentiary was really nothing more than the Joker shifting around his game pieces, setting up the game board in his favor, and ensuring that he'd turn out the victor in tonight's contest.

Every move had been methodically calculated, deliberately concocted and sadistically enacted to ensure his compliancy and participation in the Joker's tournament. And he'd masterfully, wonderfully and ever so helpfully, fallen right into the damned clown's skeletal hands. His lips peeled back in a wordless snarl as he crushed the paper in his fist. It disgusted him, these games. He'd only been playing this type of game with that damned clown for what felt like forever.

A part of him-a deep and dark part that he did his best to keep buried, knew that the only way that the games would end was after one, or the both of them, was dead. Why he continued to allow that damned clown to drag him down into this perverse world of his, he did not know. He could have ended it long ago. He could have chosen to give the madman what it was that he wanted, what it was that he _deserved_.

But no...

He had to be the self-righteous Knight...

He had to be the moralistic Man..

He had to be the damn Saint.

And his family and his friends were the ones who'd suffered for it. Images rose in his mind to torment and torture him, to remind him of just a few of the things that that damned clown had done to him and his family:

Dick, bleeding from where he had been shot in the chest...

Barbara, paralyzed from where a bullet grazed her spinal cord...

Tim, leg mangled after being blown off the roof of a three-story building...

Jim, arm heavily bandaged as he stands at his wife's gravesite...

And the final image...

The one that he could not...

...that he would not _ever_ be able to forget:

Jason, his body little more than a tangled, broken mess after the Joker's vicious and brutal assault upon him.

That night was the one that would live forever in his mind. Because it was his fault that his son had been murdered. Just as it was his fault for not recognizing that what Jason had needed the most was a father, and not a partner. Of course, he had not listened to his gut that night either. He had ignored that parental voice whispering to him about taking the boy with him. And his son had paid the price for his mistake. Repressed grief added to fury, a raging flood of anger and hate that simmered deep in his belly like molten lava. He'd failed Jason that night, left him alone and in the hands of a monster. A madman who'd taken a crowbar to him for no reason other than because he'd "always wanted to."

The rage erupted from him like lava from a volcano, and he directed the magma flow at the menagerie of items that littered the top of the desk. In one smooth flick of his arm he swept the pictures, the newspaper and magazine clippings and the books off the scarred surface. And felt only a moderate satisfaction while he watched them all rain down onto the tile like hot ash.

_Love is a little bit of anarchy, Joker_? he thought savagely. _Well, you're about to get a big dose of it_.

Fed by his torment, and wrapped in the glove of his personalized hell, he resumed his hunt for the psychotic madman that had caused so much pain, so much misery, and so much death.


End file.
